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 Review by kilometers 
UPDATED: 310 days ago
member for 1.8 years, 382 visits, last login: 19 days ago
 Sacramento,Sacramento,CA
 Contract price not specified.
 "Cheaper than cable, service has been reliable thus far"
 "High ping times causes lag in video games, upload speeds should be much higher"
 "Worth it if the price beats whatever your local cable company offers you."
| Pre Sales Information:
Install Co-ordination:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Value for money:
(ratings match consensus)
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In December I decided to switch from Comcast to AT&T U-verse after getting a really cool promotional deal in the mail. For the most basic digital cable package and 8/768 internet and an unlimited calling plan I was paying about 150 dollars a month. When I ordered U-verse I got the u-300 TV package and the elite 6/1 speed tier plus the HD channels for about 115 a month. Plus I acquired a nice DVR which I really enjoy using since I am gone 80% of the week. Plus it can record over a hundred hours of SDTV.
The install went pretty good. It took most of the day because the tech ran into a bunch of issues towards the end but he was fun to talk to. Really friendly guy. They do Saturday appointments which works for me since I work Monday-Friday with evening classes scattered in-between. He got everything working and made sure I knew how to use everything before he departed. He took his time and didn't rush anything. No complaints here.
First I'll cover the good:
The service itself is very reliable. There was maybe one or two times where my internet and TV went out. Once was even during a movie we were watching. The SD channels look very clear on my TV and the DVR was very easy for me to learn considering it was my first one. That and the on-demand content has literally stopped me from renting movies from Blockbuster. I can always find something to watch. And renting new releases over on-demand saves me a trip to Blockbuster and a future trip for returning it. The amount of HD channels has grown a bit as well and I hope they continue to add new channels.
My internet has been fairly satisfactory as well. It's nice having my own private 6/1 connection that doesn't suffer from peak hours like the cable did. That's one thing I don't miss about cable. It was a speed downgrade from what I had before but pretty soon I'll be updated to 10/1.5 anyways.
Now the bad points:
On the TV side the HD channel quality suffers sometimes. With still scenes it looks fine but during fast moving scenes you can notice the quality degrade. It doesn't bug me too much since I've grown used to it but when I watch HD channels on my sisters direct TV hers look way better. Oh, and if you have a big family and are thinking about ordering U-verse think again. At this point you are limited to 4SD streams and 1HD stream. If you have 5 or more TVs in the house trying to watch different channels at the same time you might run into some trouble. It doesn't matter to me since I live by myself. Though it still sucks I can't record and watch a different HD channel at the same time. And it seems like we have to wait FOREVER with the new stream since AT&T is terrible at keeping release dates on time.
Now my biggest issue with the internet portion is the damn ping times. I like to play XBOX Live with my friends. They often tell me my ping goes from green to red randomly. And then at that point I start losing more often due to lag. I'd also like to note that my 360 and PS3 are set to DMZ mode so it isn't port blocking that's causing lag. It's AT&T forcing you on interleaved if you're on VDSL that's adding to your pings. And in my opinion this is unacceptable. How the hell does AT&T's next gen "lightspeed" project have worse pingtimes than their last gen DSL?
I was gonna complain about the last gen speeds they offer as well but they are improving that with the 10meg package coming out(plus faster speeds in the future with pair bonding). I'd still like to note though that the upload speeds could use some change. We're getting to the point where we need more upload speed. Everyone (or at least everyone I know) has a faster internet connection than 1.5mbps. With people having 3-10mbps download these days why can't our upload match for quicker file sharing? Before it was mostly technology preventing it but VDSL should be able to support a faster upload speed than 1.5mbps. Plus there are those who upload tons of files to their server through FTP, or those serious gamers who like to host large games, or those who like to seed torrents, or those who just want to send home movies over the internet to family members far away. These days we need more than 768kbps or 1mbps. AT&T should have made their packages to be something more like this:
Express: 1.5/1
Pro: 3/1.5
Elite: 6/3
Max: 10/5
Or even better make them symmetrical. This would definitely give people another reason to jump from the local cable provider to u-verse just because of the huge difference in upload.
So what sucks most about being on U-Verse is the fact that we have to wait so long for these problems to be fixed. And what's funny is AT&T, this big company that has millions of customers for local phone, DSL broadband, and Wireless phone service picked the cheap route of going FTTN and using ancient copper lines to deliver next gen services. If they would have went FTTH completely like Verizon is doing then we would have uncompressed HD video, very low pings, no steam limits, and an overall better service. We wouldn't have to sit on release dates for updates like "2 HD streams" which competitors can already do. It just seems stupid of a company with a lot of money to take this cheap route when they could just upgrade to FTTH, which would pretty much beat any cable competitor in the area and remove like 90% of the current issues and limitations the service has today.
I still like the service much better than Comcast and will stick with them for now. The service will improve in time. It's just a matter of waiting while they work out the bandwidth issues. But I'll tell you right now that u-verse might lose me as a customer depending on how Comcast handles their DOCSIS3 launch.
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